


Choices

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Transitions [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Holding Hands, Human Cole (Dragon Age), Literal Sleeping Together, POV Cole (Dragon Age), Parental Solas (Dragon Age), Parental Varric Tethras, Sleepiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-12 23:21:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21234260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Cole learns to sleep.





	Choices

Cole felt… bad.

They had made camp on the road back toward Skyhold, having made their way up and out of the Hinterlands, and he was sitting on a folded mat beside the fire, which was crackling quietly, the warmth reaching out and gently licking his skin. Around the camp, he could feel the lulling ease of people dreaming, the soft susurrations of the rippling Veil as people dipped their toes into the Fade.

Varric and Solas were both still awake. Cole could hear them talking quietly on the other side of camp, although he couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying – he would have been able to _tell_, before, exactly what they were saying, exactly…

He felt bad. His shoulders ached, and his wrists, too, and his chest hurt, and his _eyes_ hurt. It was a funny, sticky hurt, not one that he really remembered feeling in the longest time – he was used to his body getting a little bit tired, or a little pain in his body, or injuries, but this was a weird, _sticky_ pain, it weighed him down.

There was something in his throat, and he didn’t like it. It felt heavy and thick at the very base of his neck, and he wanted it to crawl out and go away somewhere else, but it wouldn’t, no matter how much he wished at it, even when he opened his mouth and moved his jaw around, trying to coax it free.

Across the fire, he saw a scout yawn, and his body acted of its own accord: his jaw widened a little further, and he felt a weird rustling in his ears and his cheeks and his throat, and the yawn came through, some of the pressure going away.

Not all of it, though.

“Hey, kid,” Varric murmured, and Cole looked up at him. He and Solas stood together, looking down at him, and he looked between their expressions, both quietly… concerned, he thought. Expressions were hard. He had to get better at them, Varric and the Iron Bull said, but it got easier, the more you looked at them.

Varric felt satisfied, but concerned, and Cole reached out for his feelings: _looks so small and still so thin but I don’t know if he’ll ever put on a little weight reminds me of Daisy sometimes all wide-eyed and too trusting but we can make him feel at home we can help he just needs a fa—_

Cole looked to Solas.

His pain was bigger, but quieter than anyone else’s, always: his pain was buried underneath the barrier he kept it under, like he kept all his spirit underneath his funny clothes and the way he talked, sometimes. He could be like Dorian and Vivienne, Cole thought, all shine and wonder and easy nobility, but he chose not to, and Cole didn’t understand…

He understood more than Solas wished he did, Cole thought.

Solas reached out, and because Cole’s hat was in his lap, it was Cole’s hair that he touched, gently drawing his fingers through the lank, white locks. Cole let his eyes close shut, and it felt better, to close his eyes, somehow, it didn’t feel as heavy or sticky, but he didn’t want to open them again.

_Needs to sleep. He’s made his choice, must be more human now, must sleep and touch the Fade in the way that he now can, but how to teach him? And how will he learn to die, when…?_

Cole opened his eyes, giving Solas a doleful look, and Solas drew his hand away. He looked regretful, but Cole knew it was over what _he_ would do, and not what Cole had done.

“It doesn’t have to happen,” Cole said. “Not every wall has to come down. Sometimes—”

“You’re tired, Cole,” Solas said quietly. “You need to sleep.”

“I don’t sleep,” Cole mumbled, reaching up and rubbing his eye, but while rubbing his palm against his eyelid soothed it a little, it didn’t make all of the sticky tiredness go away. It felt worse, somehow, than it had before he’d closed his eyes. Was this what it felt like, to go to sleep? But it was _awful_, and it was so heavy and achy and uncomfortable, why…?

“Coulda fooled me, kid,” Varric murmured. “Come on, pick your mat up. There’s space in the tent.”

He got up reluctantly when Varric nudged his shoulder, and he followed them to the tent he and Solas shared – they didn’t mind sharing, Varric and Solas. Solas didn’t mind sharing a tent with anybody, except that Vivienne wouldn’t share a tent with anyone, and Sera wouldn’t share a tent with _him_; everyone shared with Varric and didn’t mind. Cassandra would share with Sera but not with a man; Sera would share with Dorian but not with the Bull or Blackwall, because they were too big and they got in the way; Lavellan—

It was all very complicated.

Where would he fit in? How would it work, if he had to share tents, now, if he had to lie down on a bed roll for too many hours in the dark and the quiet and do nothing at all? When everyone else was sleeping, before, he would go and listen to rivers babble or trees whisper, or watch people’s dreams, or look over someone’s shoulder as they were reading, and everyone slept for nearly a third of the day, it all took so _long_.

He laid his mat down between Varric and Solas’ bedrolls. Solas’ was the way the elves made, like Lavellan had: it was made with furs sewn onto a lining of neatly layered leaves, and Cole had watched Lavellan make the bedroll for Solas, had watched him carefully pin the fabric into place on each segment and then sew it perfectly in place.

It had hurt Solas, when Lavellan had brought it to his office, and Cole had asked him, afterwards, why.

“But he did it to be kind, and thoughtful,” Cole had said, sitting on the scaffold that Solas sat on to paint and staring down at him, and Solas had sighed quietly, had looked up at him. “Why would it hurt you? He likes you, and you like him.” A moment had passed, and Cole had said, “He’d like for you to like him more. Noble, proud, like the People should be, stronger than he looks, wish he’d smile more often, he looks so sad when no one is watching him—”

“Is that you narrating my thoughts of him, or his of me?” Solas had asked.

“He made you a soft bed, and it makes you sad that he thought of it. It makes him too real.”

“Yes,” Solas had said.

Varric’s bedroll was expensive. Hawke had brought it for him even though he had come from far away, had brought it with sweet words of how he knew Varric missed feather beds and a hairy chest to lie on when he was in the field, and Bianca’s name had hung between their hands like an anchor as he’d handed it over.

“No,” Cole said when Varric laid a third bedroll down, between the two of them. “That isn’t mine. That’s Mahanon’s.”

“Yeah, he’s sleeping in a hammock tonight,” Varric said, waving a hand. “He’s already out of it, Cole – you know our Inquisitor likes to sleep up in the trees, if he can swing it.”

_Would have been made for the crystal palaces of Arlathan, would have slept on the beds of glass and—_

Cole turned away from Solas’ sadness, and he laid down on the bed roll. It was soft. He felt the leaves, neatly packed inside, rustle quietly but not crinkle, he looked at Varric in the darkness as he lay down on his back. Varric slept like that, on his back; Solas slept on his belly, one arm wrapped around his pillow, but now his pillow was laid gently under Cole’s head, and Solas’ cheek was rested on his own arm.

“You don’t have to,” Cole said.

“No,” Solas agreed.

“My eyes hurt.”

“You’re fatigued. It’s your body’s way of telling you it’s time to sleep.”

“It doesn’t need to tell me like this,” Cole muttered, pressing his cheek into Solas’ pillow an crossing his arms over his chest. The pillow smelled like Solas did, like pencil sharpenings and parchment pages and the Fade, and he felt himself relax a little as Solas laid a blanket over Cole’s shoulder. He was lying under his own cloak, and Cole wanted to feel guilty, but he liked the weight of the blanket on his body, liked that it was heavy on his shoulders, on his hip. He liked… heavy.

“S’gotta tell you somehow, kid,” Varric said quietly. “How else would it make you listen?”

“How do I make it happen?” Cole demanded, feeling irritable – _churlish_, he felt the word from Solas’ mind, but affectionately, still tinted with that funny sadness he had when he thought of Cole, now, he didn’t think of him so sadly before, but now, because he’d chosen…

“Well, close your eyes, for starters,” Varric murmured, and Cole obeyed, his eyes closing. He laid there, for a moment, his mouth shut, his eyes shut, his face pressed into the pillow, his body underneath the blanket. “Kid,” Varric said, and Cole felt the _so funny it’s cute really he just doesn’t know the first thing about_, “are you still wearing your boots?”

Going to sleep was the same as being under the blanket. It slipped over him, warm and heavy, and weighed him under.

When he woke up, it was still dark, but he could feel that someone had taken his boots off, because his feet were light and only wrapped by his socks, which the Iron Bull had bought for him, because Cole had gone without them before, and the Iron Bull had said it would hurt him, if he did that, and then Blackwall had sat with him and told him how to put them on, and told him he had to change them every day, and that he had to keep them dry if he could, and make sure that they came up to his ankle so that they protected his ankle from the rub of his boot, and make sure the heel and the toe didn’t rub, and Cole had said it was too much to remember, and Blackwall had said, low and wry, “Well, tough.”

He sat up. His mouth felt… _Scratchy_. Dry, nasty, parched, like desert sands without rain, the old Cole had felt like this, for so long, _thirsty_—

He grabbed at the water skein on the other side of Varric’s waist, drinking from it, swallowing down too much water and making himself cough wetly, but over the sound of Solas’ quiet, rhythmic breathing, and Varric’s low, rumbling snoring, the other two men didn’t snore.

Cole, in the middle of them, was framed by their hands, because Solas had stretched out his arm above Cole’s pillow while he slept, and Varric’s had reached out to meet it, interlinking their fingers, his thumb pressed loosely to the centre of Solas’ palm.

Sera laid on top of people, when she shared a tent with them. Sera got cold at night, and she’d wrap around anyone warm – it was why she wouldn’t share with Solas, because she didn’t like to touch him, didn’t want to get too close to him. Dorian liked it when the Iron Bull let him be on top, and lie on his chest, his face pressed against the Iron Bull’s warmth, and Cole wondered if that’s what Solas and Varric would do, if he wasn’t here, between them.

It was complicated, when Varric…

Bianca set his heart on fire, but it burned too hot, so hot it hurt him, sometimes, and left him charred and gasping. Hawke was just warm, a warm body and a warm smile and a warm friendship. Was Solas warm, like Hawke was, when Varric thought of him? Was he simple, like Hawke was? But then, what was Hawke?

It used to be easy, to reach for the feelings when people were sleeping, but it felt harder now, like it was a river churning too fast, and there was too much pressure if he tried to put his fingers in it. _When you dip into people’s heads, and take a drink_…

“Cole,” Solas said in a low voice, and Cole looked at him. Solas eyes were still closed, and he didn’t draw his hand away from Varric’s. “It is hours yet until dawn. You need more sleep than you’ve yet had.”

“He’s holding your hand.”

Solas flinched suddenly, wrenching his hand back from Varric’s, sitting up, and he Cole watched Varric stir, his snoring stuttering, one eye opening. “Maker’s breath, what is it?”

_Embarrassment reached for him and I shouldn’t have of course he reached back when he was asleep I didn’t mean to didn’t expect him to_—

“Why are you embarrassed?” Cole asked, yawning without meaning to. “It’s not a bad thing, is it?”

“Go to sleep, Cole,” Solas said softly. Shame radiated from him like heat.

“I’m cold,” Cole said. It was true, somewhat. He was cold – it was a cold night.

“My cloak, then,” Solas said, reaching for the cloak at his hip, but before Cole could argue, Varric grumbled wordlessly and shoved his bedroll closer to Cole’s, pulling Solas’ closer with one sudden drag of his hand, and Varric put one arm around Cole, over the blanket.

“Just get closer, Chuckles, can’t let the kid freeze.”

_Knows exactly what he’s doing fenhedis the little shi—_

“I’m not little,” Cole complained, and Solas curled in toward him, not actually reaching to hold Cole, like Varric did, but curling his body in toward Cole’s, bracketing him in between himself and Varric. Cole felt Solas sigh, felt his breath touch through his hair. Important, to be touched. Important, not to go without. Hard to ask for, but you must, Cole, you must, don’t reply out loud. “It’s not easy,” Cole mumbled.

“Haminas, da’len,” Solas murmured. “Haminas dia, melava somniar.”

Cole slept – slept well, as instructed – and his dreams were strange and wandering things.

**Author's Note:**

> “Haminas, da’len. Haminas dia, melava somniar.” - "Sleep, child. Sleep well, it's time to dream."


End file.
